Configuring Your Design Environment

Choosing your VHDL and Verilog version

Sigasi Studio supports VHDL version 1993, 2002 and 2008 and Verilog (2005) and SystemVerilog (2012).
You can select the default VHDL version to use in: Window > Preferences > Sigasi > VHDL.
You can set the default Verilog version in: Window > Preferences > Sigasi > (System)Verilog.

Since Sigasi Studio 3.2, you can also set the language version
per project, per folder and per file.
In the Project Explorer, right click your project, folder or file; select Properties > VHDL Version
or Properties > (System)Verilog Version and select the version via the dropdown menu.

When you change the language version of a file, only that file is affected.
However, when you change the version of a folder, then everything in that folder will have the new language version.
Any overrides in the folder and its sub-folders will be removed.
When you are defining the language versions for a new project you should map from top (project root) to bottom (files).

The version information is stored in <project path>/.settings/com.sigasi.hdt.vhdl.version.prefs and <project path>/.settings/com.sigasi.hdt.verilog.version.prefs.
We recommend you add this file to version control so you can share it with your team.

Notes:

VHDL libaries: Any new project that you create will have the Common Libraries (STD and IEEE) that correspond to your selected VHDL version.
Your existing project will not be modified.
If you want to update the Common Libraries for an existing project, right-click the project and select Library Mapping > Reset Common Libraries.
Since Sigasi Studio 3.3, you will get a warning if your Common Libraries do not match the VHDL version of you VHDL file.
You can use the proposed quick fix to resolve the issue.

If you want to compile VHDL 87 code, you should select the “1993” option. There are no checks to warn about constructs that were not supported in 1987, but that were introduced in 1993.

Sigasi Studio does not send the Common Libraries to an external compiler. It is expected that these libraries are pre-compiled.

Font size

Sometimes you want extra small fonts, so that you can fit more content on your screen. Another time you
may want extra large fonts, so that you can use a beamer and your audience can see what you are doing.

Most fonts, including the font that is used by the editors, can be controlled in the preferences:
Window > Preferences. Fonts are controlled in General > Appearance >Colors and Fonts. The font of the editors are in Basic > Text font.

Some fonts cannot be controlled in this preference page. These fonts are defined by general system settings, and are used for writing the menu names, the Project Explorer view and the Outline and Hierarchy views. On
Windows, you can change these fonts by changing your font settings in the Windows Control Panel. On Linux, these fonts are controlled by a settings file: ${HOME}/.gtkrc-2.0 . You can change the font by adding
a line like:

gtk-font-name = "Sans 10"

You have to restart Sigasi Studio before these changes take effect.

Annotations Colors

Annotations are colors added on top of your text editor, and to the right of your text editor, in the scroll bar. The image below shows annotations for each occurrence of a certain data type. The color has
been changed to bright green.

You can change the color of annotations in Window > Preferences > General > Editors > Text Editors > Annotations. For the particular case of occurrence annotations, you want to modify the color for
annotation type Occurrences.
If more than one Occurrences type is displayed, you need the org.eclipse.xtext.ui.editor.defaultOccurrenceAnnotation. The others may refer to occurrences for Java or other plug-ins.

Tabs and Spaces

If you want to use spaces instead of tabs, you can set your indentation preferences in: Window > Preferences > General > Editors > Text Editors. Here you can select choose to Insert Spaces for Tabs and choose your preferred Displayed Tab Width.

The “Gutter”

The Gutter is the small area to the left of the editor view. It is used for displaying extra information about your code.

Line numbers: What line is this?

Quick Diff: Did this file change?

Folding: hiding pieces of code from view

Markers: error markers, warnings and bookmarks.

There is not much to configure about markers, but the other categories can be turned on or off.

Line numbers

To enable line numbers, right-click in the gutter and select Show Line Numbers.

Quick Diff

Instead of using a compare editor, you can enable quick diff support and see the changes within the text editor. This feature can be enabled via Window > Preferences > General > Editors > Text Editors > Quick Diff.

When you enable Quick Diff, you can see changes in the active editor with the version on disk (or the latest version in version control), by hovering the annotations in the gutter.

Language

Keyboard shortcuts

Sigasi Studio comes with a large number of Keyboard Shortcuts preconfigured. You can configure keyboard shortcuts (key bindings) in Window > Preferences > General > Keys. You can modify individual keyboard shortcuts or add new key bindings.
There is also a preconfigured scheme for Emacs-like keyboard shortcuts.

After you have configured your keyboard shortcuts, you can export your settings and share them with your colleagues (or re-import them on another computer):
To export, go to File > Export… > General > Preferences, and select Key Preferences. To import that file: File > Import… > General > Preferences.

Formatting

Preserve newlines: this option configures the formatter to not add or remove newlines in your code

Upper case keywords: when this option is enabled the formatter will convert all keywords to uppercase. When this option is not enabled, uppercase keywords will be converted to lowercase. (Without a Sigasi Studio XL license, keywords are not changed by the formatter).